You can’t expect much from the San Francisco Municipal Railway: broken trains, late buses, and slow vehicles are the norm for any rush hour riding. But you can expect your Muni bus to be environmentally friendly. San Francisco will have all of its city vehicles converted to accept bio-diesel by the end of the month. Vehicles accept 20% soy based biofuel and 80% normal diesel. The city's goal is reduce emissions by 20% below the 1990 level in the next five years. Currently the soy fuel is bought from the Midwest, but San Francisco wishes to use recycled cooking oil from restaurants. 59 restaurants have already expressed interest.
San Francisco Muni already has a large fleet of electric vehicles and hybrid buses. 40% of Muni's buses run off of electricity, using overhead wires, and are zero-emissions vehicles. Electric motors are quieter than diesel engines (although some complain the new fleet of trolleybuses is too noisy because of beeping, whistles, and outdoor speakers with pre recorded announcements, such as: “1 California to Howard and Main” and “Please hold on.”). The Muni Metro light rail lines, F Market historic streetcars, and trolleybuses all use electricity generated from a renewable energy source at Hetch Hetchy, a hydro-electric plant in the Sierra Nevada.
Converting the city's bus fleet to use bio-diesel is a major step in reducing pollution. Although using bio-diesel reduces emissions and has a cleaner combustion, one must keep in mind that bio-diesel does not mean zero-emissions or zero CO2 products. Next step that should be taken in the future: electric and hydrogen vehicles.
Photo: A hybrid bus in San Francisco.
Read a bit more:
San Francisco Greasecycle program
